A brush with Mexican history.

ALTHOUGH ITS OCHER-tinged colonial center easily ranks as one of Mexico's prettiest, cleanest, and best preserved, the highland state capital of Tlaxcala, population 75,000, receives scant attention from the country's national and international tourists. Still, the fortunate few who do make a visit are sure to be rewarded not only by a wealth of architectural beauty and archaeological treasures, but also by a series of dazzlingly beautiful murals entitled The History of Tlaxcala and Its Contributions to Mexico Throughout the Ages.

The multi-paneled frescos are the life's work of Tlaxcalan native Desiderio Hernandez Xochitiotzin, who died last year at age 85. The murals are located downtown in the Palacio de Gobierno, a sixteenth-century building elegantly garbed in rust-colored, herringbone-patterned brick, carved gray cantera stone, and intricately sculpted white plaster. Originally undertaken in 1957, when the artist was 35, the paintings provide the important closing chapters to Mexico's exalted mural movement, begun by Diego Rivera in the 1920s and carried forth by the likes of David Alfaro Siqueiros, Jose Clemente Orozco, and Juan O'Gorman.

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Once past the Palacio de Gobierno's yawning central entryway, visitors catch their first glimpses of Hernandez Xochitiotzin's lavish Technicolor masterpiece in its majestic sweep across a 538-square-yard expanse of first-floor walls, columns, and adjacent stairwell. Twenty-four individual episodes recount the tumultuous history of this state, one of Mexico's smallest and most densely populated, and its age-old capital, situated in the country's mountainous eastern central region some 70 miles from Mexico City.

True to its title, the work's begriming sequences, executed over a ten-year period, focus on pre-Hispanic themes--including the arrival of the first human settlers to the fertile Valley of Mexico and the foundation, in the 1300s, of an autonomous Tlaxcalan state that for 200 years fought for survival against the relentless attacks of its neighbors, the warlike Mexica, commonly known as the Aztecs. But the artist's passion for history extends fat" beyond mere battles. His exhaustive research into the culture, traditions, and everyday activities of his people can be appreciated in other panels from that time celebrating the myth of the discovery of corn, the maguey plant's pivotal role in Indian life, and the colorful bustle and bargaining of the ancient Ocotelulco marketplace.

Then in 1968, according to the artist's daughter, Citlali H. Xochitiotzin Ortega, the epic project hit a major roadblock as the artist butted heads with the authorities over how to recount events dealing with the Spanish Conquest of Mexico. In the then-still-official story, the Tlaxcalans (who in 1519 struck an alliance with Hernan Cortes against their hated Aztec adversaries) were depicted as traitors to their country, although today most modern historians readily acknowledge that a Mexican nation, as such, did not exist in those times. The Aztec Empire was, instead, a loose-knit confederation of city-states dominated by an all-powerful ruling class that levied crushing tributes on its subjects while regularly offering them up as sacrifice to appease their gods.

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Only in 1988, twenty years after the controversy arose, was Hernandez Xochitiotzin allowed to depict the Tlaxcalan version of the Conquest, along with other panels spotlighting with what the artist has called his people's Golden Century. These were the triumphant years following the European arrival when Tlaxcalans, in partnership with the Spanish Crown, were sent to the four corners of New Spain to help educate nomadic tribes and settle newly established cities. Today, thanks in part to trailblazers like Hernandez Xochitiotzin, there is a growing acceptance of so-called "micro-histories" that allow minority groups a larger say in the telling of significant historical events that directly concern them. And not surprisingly, the artist's sweeping mural, already much beloved by Tlaxcalans, has become one of the city's top cultural attractions. The once-controversial work will be the subject of a new book entitled Semillas de la historia [Seeds of History] to be published later this year by Editorial Cuarto Creciente.